Saint Joseph Catholic Church

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A Hong Kong court sentenced Catholic pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison on charges of violating national security.

Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations condemned the decision.

Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired bishop of Hong Kong, joined Lai’s wife at the sentencing, according to AsiaNews, the agency of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions.

The Holy See Press Office announced on February 10 that Pope Leo is considering a one-day visit to Monaco at the end of March.

During a January 17 audience, Prince Albert II of Monaco invited the Pontiff to visit the nation.

“The Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the religion of the State,” Monaco’s Constitution states (Article 9), with religious freedom granted to all (Article 23). Located in Western Europe, the principality of 32,000 (map) is 86% Christian (83% Catholic) and 1% Jewish.

630 adults were received into the Church in the Netherlands in 2024, up from 455 in 2023, according to Radboud University’s Catholic Institute for Ecclesiastical Statistics (KASKI).

6,110 children were baptized in 2024, down 7% from the previous year and down from 42,411 in 2000. Only 2.7% of Catholics attended Sunday Mass weekly in 2024, down from 9.2% in 2000.

The Western European nation of 17.8 million (map) is 52% Christian (30% Catholic) and 9% Muslim.

Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, said that “it is concerning that food, a fundamental requirement for human life, has become a financial asset, with investors’ interests taking precedence over farmers’ and consumers’ needs.”

“Speculation on food prices is not an abstract market exercise; it is, in reality, a bet on the future of humanity,” the prelate said at a recent meeting of leaders of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD). “No economic logic can justify a system in which access to basic necessities is subject to the volatility of financial markets.”

Stating that “markets must serve people, not the other way around,” Archbishop Balestrero said that poor nations should gain “fair and affordable access to trade finance” and that “policies and investments must be guided by the principle of subsidiarity, because only through consistent and genuine collaboration a fair and accessible food security system for all can be established.”

The research journal Archaeometry published a response to a previous article on the Shroud of Turin.

In the previous article, Cicero Moraes argued in favor of the Shroud’s “origin as a medieval work of art.” In the response, Tristan Casabianca, Emanuela Marinelli, and Alessandro Piana argued that the earlier article “relies on ambiguous aims, methodological flaws, and fallacious reasoning.”

Venezuela’s bishops released a pastoral exhortation calling for respect for human rights, a respect for popular sovereignty, the release of all political prisoners, and forgiveness rather than violence.

The bishops released “Despuntará tu luz como la aurora” (“Your light will break forth like the dawn” (Isaiah 58:8) on February 9, over a month after the United States removed strongman Nicolás Maduro from office. Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s current acting president, was Maduro’s vice president.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago called upon the White House to apologize for a video posted on President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account portraying former President Barack Obama and his wife as apes.

“Portraying human beings as animals—less than human—is not new,” said Cardinal Cupich. “It was a common way in past centuries for politicians and others to demean immigrant groups as each arrived, the Chinese, Irish, Italians, Slavs, Jews, Latinos and so on.”

The prelate added:

A few days ago, we saw that in the White House such blatant racism is not merely a practice of the past. If the President intentionally approved the message containing viciously racist images, he should admit it. If he did not know of it originally, he should explain why he let his staff describe the public outcry over their transmission as fake outrage. Either way he should apologize.

Bishop Daniel Garcia of Austin, the chairman of the US bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion of Racial Justice and Reconciliation, also criticized the video, which President Trump discussed in an exchange with reporters.